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Posted on October 17, 2016 - 10:14am

Elizabeth Kolbert's career spans from articles about Rudy Giuliani and Hillary Clinton, to more significantly climate change and extinctions. Her latest book, The Sixth Extinction, lays the framework for discussing the significant human impact in the anthropocene. With a tree frog that just became extinction on September 26, 2016, and how her book begins with a golden frog, her visit to ASU this week is timely and one everyone is looking forward to.

On October 5, 2016 the world officially passed 400 ppm in CO2, more than it has been since the dawn of hominids, and a threshold for a new and dangerous world. In that regard, Curtis Marean, whose studies of people in the cave in South Africa are relevant because it is likely that all living humans descended from that group, which was perhaps down to only 500 individuals at one point. Namely, we almost became extinct 50-100K years ago. Moreover their move out of Africa was instigated by climate change, which has therefore played an important role throughout our human history.

Michael Shermer has focussed on challenging conventional wisdom, when it is wrong. As editor of Skeptic, he has heralded the need to see the world as it really is, rather than as we would like it to be. We will not be able to address the challenges of the 21st century if we don’t, including modern politics and other inconvenient truths.